The ussr and Eastern Europe

In 1903 the Bolshevik (majority) faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party, headed by Vladimir Lenin, split from the Menshevik (minority) faction to form a separate party. In 1917 the Bolsheviks seized control of the Russian revolutionary movement and founded the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). The name Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) was adopted in 1952. The general secretary of the CPSU, the party's highest official, wielded political power in the USSR. The party permeated all facets of Soviet economic, political, military, and cultural life. Until the end of the 1980s, the CPSU was the leader of the international Communist movement. As the 1990s began, economic and political upheavals in Eastern Europe and the USSR forced the CPSU to give up its leading role. By the end of 1991 the USSR had dissolved and its Communist remnant was in disarray (безладдя, невпорядкованість).

The drastic decline of the CPSU followed the collapse of many Eastern European Communist parties, which had been linked to the CPSU. The Communist parties of Eastern Europe had their origins in the period from 1891 to 1921. They assumed power in the late 1940s following the occupation of Eastern Europe by the Soviet Army. Every Communist government in Eastern Europe surrendered its monopoly on political power between 1989 and 1991.

China

Unlike the Communist organizations of Eastern Europe and the USSR, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was able to stem the tide of democratic protest in the late 1980s. Since the establishment of the People's Republic in 1949, it has been the country's only legal party. The Chinese and Soviet parties were once closely allied, but during the 1960s they became bitter rivals. The CCP's influence in the international Communist movement declined after the death of its longtime chairman, Mao Zedong (Mao Tse-tung), in 1976. Because of the political instability that followed Mao's death, the CCP sought to lessen the power of individual leaders by making the National People's Congress the leading body of the CCP.